Joey Sellers

Electric Works is pleased to present the Periodic Calendar, a new breakthrough in temporal technology, created by Joey Sellers and conceptual art think tank Ape Con Myth.

Modeled on the periodic table of elements, the Periodic Calendar reveals the full landscape of possible days by categorizing years based on their first day of the week. In this new system, the days of the month shatter into the isotopes of multiple elements, creating a perpetual calendar capable of exploring past, present and future dates as never before.

Ape Con Myth’s work revolves around the search for new possibilities within reality by rewiring the abstract structures governing it and for five years has produced variations on the traditional wall calendar in an effort to change the way the world thinks about and experiences time.

Please join us on January 19th from 2-3pm to get a glimpse of the future with the creator of the Periodic Calendar. Sellers will give a short talk about what Type of Year 2013 will be and help the curious find their Birth Elements.

You can also participate in Ape Con Myth’s Calendar Trade-In Program by bringing in your new, yet hopelessly outdated, regular wall calendars for a $5 discount on the Periodic Calendar.

Hope to see you there!

Electric Works
1360 Mission St.
San Francisco
(Sa3) January 19th, 2013
2-3pm

What does 2013 have in common with 2002, 1991, 1985 and 1974? They are all Tuesday Years. As in, they are all years that began on a Tuesday.

What does 2013 not share with every other Tuesday Year on the books? This is the first time we know what we are getting into from the start. But aside from memories, that’s all we know.

What are Tuesday Years like? We are about to find out.

Looking at the first week of the year, we are reminded that for the entirety of 2013 we will be following the orange isotopes to find the day of the month.

In Tuesday Years, January 1st exists as Element 2, while Element 1 does not exist at all.

In more realistic terms, a Tuesday Jan 1 disconnects the New Year’s Day holiday from the weekend, meaning many people had to work on 2012’s final note, a Monday New Year’s Eve. There was still a celebration like every other year, but perhaps a little less of one thanks to the day of the week.

Meanwhile, compare that with 2015, when a Thursday Year finale will give us a Thursday New Year’s Eve leading into 2016, a Friday Year, which will begin with a three-day weekend. Reality has to wait until January 4th that year!

And that’s just one example of how different the Types of Years can be in practice, yet up until now, we weren’t even acknowledging this information, much less taking advantage of it. When 2019 rolls around, we will be a little better acquainted with the highs and lows of a Tuesday Year, but it might take a few decades to get the hang of them.

Who knows how long it will take anyone to figure out why December 31, 2021 will be an excellent year to host a New Year’s party? All I can say is that this is how the date will be written on those invitations: Fr6 Dec, 2021.

The first calendar I made after we moved to San Francisco was the Ape Con Myth 2011 Have a Nice Dot Calendar.

Like the ones before it, the 2011 calendar’s only promotion was in the form of free copies sent without explanation to “places of interest”. Despite never following up, as was my custom, a few months later I found myself at one of these places, namely the gallery and fine art press, Electric Works, only to see… What?!

It was the Have a Nice Dot calendar displayed in the front window!!!

And the rest is… history in the making! After carrying the Ape Con Myth 2012 Novelty Rip-Off Calendar in their bookstore last year, I am excited to announce that Electric Works is the first location on Earth to carry the Periodic Calendar!

If you want to get up close and personal with P-Cal before buying your own, get thee to Electric Works at 1360 Mission Street in San Francisco!

Don’t believe the hype. It might be December 7th, but today has nothing to do with the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Yes, the attack did take place on December 7th, 1941, however, the 7th here has less meaning than we usually suspect. The date simply refers to the seventh day in December, but that doesn’t make all December 7ths the same.

What the difference?! The Newburyport Daily News highlights it quite well, despite writing about it on the wrong day:

In the early morning hours of that sleepy Sunday morning, waves of Japanese fighters and bombers descended on the unsuspecting U.S. Pacific fleet…

The difference is, the attack on Pearl Harbor happened on a Sunday, not a Friday.

9-to-5ers didn’t hear about it at work. It happened on a day known more for picnics and driving slow. Furthermore, the day after wasn’t a Saturday. The American people didn’t reflect on the meaning of it all while off the clock, because December 8th in 1941 was a Monday!

When should we be commemorating this infamous event? This year, the answer is Sunday, December 9th, soon to be better known as Element 410…

The problem with regular calendars is that, given the year, any day of the month can fall on any day of the week. This year December 7th is a Friday. In 2013, it will be a Saturday. And then, in 2014, it will be on a Sunday and the days of December will fall as they did in 1941.

The discrepancy can be solved using the Periodic Calendar, which is built on the notion that there are seven different types of years, each with a distinct layout of days, weeks and months. 1941 was a Wednesday Year, meaning it started on Wednesday, Jan 1, and featured a Thursday Christmas. Meanwhile, 2012 is currently a Monday Year, with Christmas soon to fall on a Tuesday.

Before the Periodic Calendar, there was no way to keep track of these things and the years went by with birthdays and holidays seeming to fall randomly on whatever day they wanted. Now that we have the Periodic Calendar though, the world is faced with a question. Are we going to continue to ignore this meaningful aspect in our shared conception of time or are we ready to unlock a new facet of the fourth dimension?

Episode one of the Periodic Calendar Quick Start Series is an intermediate level tutorial that will walk you through a number of key concepts within this new calendar system, not to mention help with early planning for the next 4th of July!

If you have any questions or comments on this slideshow, please leave them in the comments. The Periodic Calendar is new to us all, so your feedback will help refine these presentations for future time travelers!